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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26216515">Letting Your Hair Down</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders'>UniverseOnHerShoulders</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Take Me To The Stars [41]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, Fluff, Non-Sexual Intimacy, hairstyling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:27:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,013</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26216515</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the cons of being time-locked: being stuck with the same hairstyle for all of eternity. Bored of the bob, Clara decides to live vicariously through her favourite Time Lady.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Take Me To The Stars [41]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1139201</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Letting Your Hair Down</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Catch me out here going feral over 13 with long hair...</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Your hair’s getting long again,” Clara says softly, reaching over with one hand and running it through the ends of her partner’s hair. They’re both in bed, and as she lets the Doctor’s hair fall back onto the pillow, it swirls into strange shapes across the navy pillowcase; a language all its own.</p><p>“Mm,” the Doctor turns her head towards Clara’s hand, capturing it in her free hand and holding it still so that she can press a kiss to Clara’s palm, before settling with her partner’s hand on her cheek. Clara smiles, skimming her thumb over the Doctor’s cheekbone and then returning to running her hands through the Time Lady’s hair absentmindedly, wondering at the length. It’s skimming the Doctor’s shoulders now; longer than Clara’s ever seen it, and she secretly dreads the thought of having to get the scissors out and scythe it short again. Trapped as she is between heartbeats, she misses her hair growing; regrets the fact that she’s doomed to spend forever with it barely long enough to rest on her shoulders. There’s wigs, of course, and extensions, but it’s not quite the same; there’s an artificiality to them that doesn’t sit right with her, and so instead she simply pines for her hair as it was; past her shoulders, and swooshing each time she moved. Watching the Doctor’s hair thicken and lengthen as it grows past her collarbone, Clara feels a pang of longing, and realises she could live vicariously through the Time Lady.</p><p>“Don’t cut it,” she blurts, surprising them both, and the Doctor frowns at her. Clara retracts her hand from the Doctor’s hair, twisting it into the duvet and looking away from her partner in embarrassment.</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“Sorry… I shouldn’t… you can do whatever you want with it, of course you can, it’s just… it looks so pretty long. Not that it doesn’t look pretty normally; that’s not what I’m saying, it looks lovely all the time… it’s just… god, I wish mine would grow. You’re so lucky yours will. Let it be long, just for a little while.”</p><p>“What if it gets in my eyes?” she Doctor asks, smoothing her hair down and then blowing an errant strand off her face to prove a point.</p><p>“There’s hairbands,” Clara notes, resisting the urge to lean over and ruffle it. “Elastic ties. Scrunchies. All sorts of things. It wouldn’t get in your eyes… I’d make sure it wouldn’t.”</p><p>“You know I like it short.”</p><p>“I know,” Clara sighs, rolling away and feeling foolish for having spoken at all; it isn’t her place to dictate how her partner can wear her hair, but there’s something… novel about it long; something intrinsically fascinating, particularly when her own hair hasn’t grown in years. “I know. Sorry. Forget I said anything.”</p><p>“Hey,” the Doctor wraps an arm around her waist and presses a kiss to the bare skin of her shoulder. “Is it that important to you?”</p><p>“I suppose,” Clara says in a small voice. “I just… the previous you… I got to see his hair long, and it… it suited him. I got used to it. And I’m just curious… I just want to know what it looks like on you, because I’ve only ever seen you with it short, and it looks lovely! Don’t think I’m saying that it doesn’t… I’m just curious, and maybe I want to live a little through you and plait your hair because mine’s too short. Who knows? Certainly not me…”</p><p>“You’re rambling,” the Doctor murmurs fondly, kissing her shoulder again and then smiling against the skin there. “Alright, I’ll let it be. But you’re still doing the honours when I’ve had enough of it.”</p><p>“Really?” Clara asks, rolling back towards the Time Lady and beaming up at her. “You’d really grow it? For me?”</p><p>“I suppose so,” the Doctor says thoughtfully, running a hand through it experimentally and looking pensive as it falls back into place. “I mean, it can’t be that bad, can it? My hair grows faster than yours would, anyway, so it’s not going to be months and months of waiting and hoping and measuring. God, you’re not going to measure it, are you?”</p><p>“No,” Clara laughs, reaching up and running her hands through the Doctor’s hair with a contented little sigh. “I just want to brush it, and plait it, and…”</p><p>“I’m not a doll!” the Doctor protests, but her tone is warm and lacking in any real chastisement. “But I’m sure I could put up with it, for your sake.”</p><p>“Would you?”</p><p>“If that’s what you wanted, yes.”</p><p>“I love you,” Clara hums, kissing her partner with a smile. “Very, very much.”</p><p>“I bet you say that to all the girls who are going to play Rapunzel for you.”</p><p>“Only the Time Lords.”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“Clara.”</p><p>The Doctor’s voice is wheedling, pleading, and Clara turns towards it at once, her concern immediately piqued. The Doctor is leaning over the console, working on something, or she’s trying to – her hair is flopping forwards and into her eyes, and Clara resists the urge to smile fondly at the sight; there’s something so hapless about the Doctor’s expression that she can’t quite help it, and the corners of her mouth twitch up.</p><p>“Do you have any of those… things?” the Doctor asks, pushing her hair back and out of her eyes with one hand, looking over at her with desperation. “It’s just… getting in the way.”</p><p>“What did you do with the twenty-five hairbands I gave you?” Clara asks, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at her partner, who looks abruptly guilty. “I did warn you not to use them all at once.”</p><p>“I didn’t use them all at once,” the Doctor shoots back with indignation. “I used them one at a time to build a catapult. Or try to; they kept snapping. It’s a major design flaw.”</p><p>“You don’t need a catapult,” Clara rolls her eyes, wondering what she could have done to deserve a partner who in some ways was more childish than the students she’d once taught. “And they aren’t designed to stretch that far.”</p><p>“Well, do you have any more?”</p><p>Clara takes the hair tie off her wrist and throws it in the Time Lady’s general direction; the Doctor snatches it out of mid-air and fastens her hair back at the nape of her neck in a haphazard ponytail. “Better,” she says with relief. “Much, much  better.”</p><p>“Why is it growing so fast?” Clara asks, wrinkling her nose. She’d thought the Time Lady had been exaggerating when she’d made that assertion. “What are you, a weirdly-specific sort of yeti?”</p><p>“Yeti fur doesn’t grow this fast,” the Doctor says absentmindedly, flicking switches and turning dials on the console. “It’s designed to keep them warm, and if it grew so quickly, they would have to moult far more frequently and they wouldn’t have such an efficient system for keeping warm.”</p><p>“That was a joke.”</p><p>“Right,” the Doctor grimaces, her attention fixed on the console. “Dunno. It just… grows.”</p><p>“Mine didn’t grow that fast.”</p><p>“Well, humans do insist on doing things at a glacial pace,” the Doctor notes with something approaching a smirk. “Some of us are just lucky, I guess.”</p><p>“Snob,” Clara teases. “Snob, snobby snob.”</p><p>“Yeah, alright,” the Doctor looks up at her then and rolls her eyes. “Don’t make me regret agreeing to this, alright?”</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>The Doctor’s hair is swishing around her shoulders now, and a much darker shade of blonde than Clara is used to. She’s the only one to have seen it thus far – the Doctor has insisted that it wouldn’t be right or proper to visit the fam while Clara is so intent on making her grow her hair, lest something happen and it get in her eyes and prove fatal, to which Clara had only rolled <em>her </em>eyes, writing it off instead as vanity. Still, Yaz has phoned them, and the Doctor is looking at her in desperation, and so Clara finds herself perched on the extreme edge of the sofa, the Doctor sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her with a Rubik’s cube, and a YouTube video playing on her phone, which is propped on the coffee table, well out of reach of the Doctor</p><p>“Are you nearly done?” the Doctor asks for the tenth time, as Clara’s hands criss-cross behind her head, shaping the French braids demonstrated by the woman in the video, who is making it look considerably easier than Clara is finding it. “This is taking <em>forever</em>.”</p><p>“Look,” Clara says through gritted teeth. “<em>Someone </em>decided they needed to answer Yaz’s call, and <em>someone </em>insisted on the most practical, keeping-your-hair-out-your-face style possible. The same <em>someone</em> also vetoed having a bun, because it would make their head ‘feel funny.’ So this is the alternative, and it’s hard, so <em>stop whining</em>.”</p><p>“Yeah, well,” the Doctor mutters, solving the cube for the tenth time and chucking it onto the sofa opposite them with a distinctly sulky manner. “<em>Someone</em> wanted me to grow my hair.”</p><p>Clara ignores the barb and ties off the last French braid with a brightly-coloured tie.</p><p>“Done,” she says with exasperation, patting the Doctor’s shoulders. “Can we go now?”</p><p>“Yes,” the Doctor says with a grin, getting to her feet and sweeping Clara up into a hug before shaking her head emphatically, gauging the strength of the braids. “You’re a marvel. They feel very… robust.”</p><p>“Good?” Clara counters, unsure whether this is a compliment or not. “You’re welcome.”</p><p>The Doctor has already bounded off into the console room, and Clara sighs, scooping up her phone and following her with a fond eye-roll. She can’t deny it; the braids look good, and she wonders whether she might convince the Doctor to keep them. It’s a foolish hope; anything that requires the Time Lady to sit still for twenty minutes on a regular basis is a lost cause; but they look adorable, and Clara is proud of her handiwork.</p><p>She arrives in the console room as they land, and the doors open before either of them can react, Yaz and Ryan stepping over the threshold first with Graham on their heels. All three of the fam draw up sharply, their expressions awestruck.</p><p>“Doctor, we…” Yaz breaks off, staring at the Doctor in wide-eyed shock. “Your hair!”</p><p>“What?” Ryan asks with a frown. “It’s…”</p><p>“Ryan, are you… god, I know men are rubbish at this but…” Yaz blinks hard. “Look at it! It’s so long!”</p><p>“It’s not that long,” the Doctor says self-consciously, running a hand over her braids. “Is it alright? It’s not really terrible, is it? I mean the length, not the braids. Don’t tell me if the braids are; Clara did them and she’ll be dead upset if you think they’re pants.”</p><p>“No, it’s… it’s just different,” Yaz says, finally smiling. “Suits you. I’m just not used to it.”</p><p>“Nor am I,” the Doctor makes a face. “I’m just…”</p><p>“She’s letting me live vicariously,” Clara says, stepping forward and wrapping an arm around her partner’s waist. “Cute, isn’t she?”</p><p>“Very,” Yaz says emphatically. “But can we actually get down to business please?”</p><p>“Business being…?” the Doctor asks, arching an eyebrow, and Yaz seems to snap into what Clara thinks of as police-mode; her back straightens and her expression grows serious.</p><p>“There’s a bloke on the news who’s definitely an alien. And he’s opened this big, ominous factory that he’s being all mysterious about, so I think we should check him out.”</p><p>“Which bloke?” the Doctor queries with a frown, and Yaz whips out her phone to show them a photo. Looking over at it, Clara feels a stab of recognition, and beside her, the Doctor seems to experience the same feeling.</p><p>“Oh, him,” Clara says, realisation dawning on her. “Well, he’s a Zygon, but…”</p><p>“Shall we pay him a visit?” the Doctor muses. “I reckon so.”</p><p>“Yaz, you are actually barking,” Graham mutters. “Absolutely bloody barking.”</p><p>“Hey, don’t knock Yaz!” the Doctor protests. “She actually noticed my hair, and that he’s an alien. Have some faith in Yasmin Khan, please.”</p>
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